Saruman and Gollum are my two favorite characters; I seem to have a thing for fallen/corrupted figures. When Gandalf is standing at the base of Orthanc, shouting "Will you not come down?" ...and proud Saruman takes the opportunity to insult Theoden... well, I love that scene. Plus, Isengard follows directly out of the Entmoot, which is a great sidebar event.

And Gollum! Ever since those riddles in the dark, I wanted more and more genuine dialogue with the sneaky little monster. His surprise team-up with Frodo and Sam makes for some of the most tension filled portions of the book. And some of the funniest. I expect the movie will do an excellent job of combining the CG Gollum with the actors. Sure, that balrog looked fantastic, but he didn't really have to interact with anybody... Gollum and Treebeard will need to be more convincing, more human.

Other movie news...

Issue #60 of Wrapped in Plastic has a great article about Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. In a bold new theory told across a huge amount of pages, they suggest that the entire first 30 minutes of FWWM is simply a dream of Cooper's.

Now, I did think that FWWM was more obtuse than the series, and I just kind of wrote it off as Lynch being dense for art's sake. It never really occured to me that the Blue Rose or the double secretaries or the sudden appearance/disappearance of Agents Chet Desmond and Phillip Jeffries might actually mean something. Suffice it to say that I found this article extremely illuminating. Whether it accurately reflects David Lynch's intent or not, it certainly helps me find a deeper level of meaning to a very very very thick film.

And I couldn't call myself a comics fan if I didn't comment on the rumors for a new Superman film. Well, if this Ain't It Cool article by Moriarty is at all correct, it's going to blow hard. Since that one was written, AICN fatass emeritus Harry Knowles has read a revised script, and he's much easier on that version, which is somewhat comforting. (And he interviewed the scriptwriter, which is a nice piece, but challenges my notions of where fat fucking name-dropping retard movie buffs should fall in the natural pecking order of things.) One thing Harry gets completely wrong is that he wants the film to be about the Silver Age Superman, when it needs to be about a Modern Age version of the character. For those of you who aren't students of comics history, the Silver Age Superman is very similar to the animated Super Friends version: immensely powerful, construction-paint boring, and laden with idiotic super-baggage like the Legion of Super-Pets, a giant yellow key that he uses to unlock his Fortress of Solitude, the ridiculous notion that Lex Luthor and Clark Kent fought at age 12, and a periodic table of kryptonite types.

One extremely smart comment from Harry: "BATMAN & ROBIN wasn't just a bad movie... It nearly killed the comic industry. I mean, it just wasn't bad, it made folks embarrassed to walk into comic shops and ask for comics."